The present disclosure describes systems and techniques relating to generating three dimensional (3D) models from range sensor data.
Registering two or more range scans is a fundamental problem, with application to 3D modeling. While this problem is well addressed by existing techniques such as ICP (Iterative Closest Point) when the views overlap significantly, no satisfactory solution exists for wide baseline registration. For rigid modeling, most prevailing methodologies either suggest using all consecutive frames from a single range sensor in an incremental manner or merge the range scans of multiple pre-calibrated range sensors. For articulated modeling, such as of the human body, the state-of-the-art methods typically require taking multiple frames, ranging from eight to as many as forty, of different viewpoints of the moving subject. All frames are first aligned in pairs, then registered globally, both in an articulated manner. All methods above require substantial amount of overlap among neighboring frames.